Matthew 24:40-41

The parables of one taken and one left behind 24:40-41 (cf. Luke 17:34-35)

Having explained the importance of the signs leading up to His return and the responses to those signs, Jesus next explained the respective consequences of the two responses.

Many Christians who have read these verses have assumed that they describe believers taken to heaven at the Rapture and unbelievers left behind to enter the Tribulation. However the context is dealing with the second coming of Christ, not the Rapture. The sequence of events will be Jesus’ ascension, the church age beginning on Pentecost and ending with the Rapture, the Tribulation, the Second Coming, and the beginning of the messianic kingdom.

"It will be a taking away judicially and in judgment. The ones left will enjoy the blessings of Christ’s reign on earth, just as Noah and his family were left to continue life on earth. This is the opposite of the rapture, where those who are left go into the judgment of the Great Tribulation." [Note: Feinberg, Israel in . . ., p. 27.]

"Jesus was not referring to the Rapture of the church in Matthew 24. When that event takes place, all the saved will be removed from the earth to meet Christ in the air, and all the unsaved will be left on the earth. Thus, the Rapture will occur in reverse of the order of things in the days of Noah and, therefore, the reverse of the order at Jesus’ coming immediately after the Great Tribulation." [Note: Showers, p. 180. See also Gerald B. Stanton, Kept from the Hour, pp. 51-65.]

Some interpreters have made a case for this being a reference to the Rapture because Jesus used two different words for "take" in the context. In Matthew 24:39 the Greek verb is airo whereas in Matthew 24:40-41 He used paralambano. The argument is that paralambano is a word that describes Jesus taking His own to Himself. However it also occurs in a bad sense (Matthew 4:5; Matthew 4:8; John 19:16). Probably Jesus used paralambano because it more graphically pictures sweeping away as in a flood. [Note: Morison, p. 489.]

Perhaps Jesus used two illustrations to show that neither gender nor occupation nor proximate relationship will prevent the separation for judgment (cf. Matthew 10:35-36). Typically two women-often sisters, a mother and a daughter, or two servants-sat opposite each other turning the small hand mill between them. [Note: Carson, "Matthew," p. 509.]